Organising Outside Organisations – Part I

Czarniawska, Barbara and Miscione, Gianluca and Raviola, Elena and Alcadipani Da Silveira, Rafael and Tarim, Emre (2023) Organising Outside Organisations – Part I. puntoOrg International Journal, 8 (1). pp. 1-2. ISSN 2499-1333

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Abstract

It is generally assumed that organisational studies began as an academic discipline in the 1890s, when Frederick Winslow Taylor launched scientific management, while the scholars could also revoke even earlier writings of Max Weber. Since that time, many scholars have been studying formal organisations to the point where there was scarcely anything new that could be said about them. Yet times change, and so do formal organisations. The recent phenomenon of digital transformation has attracted much attention, and many great studies were and are being done, with interesting results. But digitalisation also opened wide doors to organising outside, oftentimes in spite of, and against, formal organisations. How do people organise demonstrations in Iran, in Russia or, for that matter, how did The Proud Boys do it in the USA? We need to know more about such informal organising, which was always present, but now has become widespread thanks to globalisation and digitalisation. After all, it is connecting collective actions, or ‘doings’ to one another, which is the main trait of organising. ‘Organisations’ are legal units; a ‘network’ can exist, yet do nothing; in order to accomplish anything, good or bad, ‘doings’ are necessary, and they have to be coordinated, connected, and stabilised – temporarily or for good.